An NDP provincial government could pay off for city hall and OC Transpo if the party follows through on an election promise to provide more than $100 million each year to operate trains, conventional buses and Para Transit vehicles.

Transpo’s 2018 spending budget is about $563 million. The end cost to property taxpayers is projected to be $285 million after deducting revenue from transit fares and other fees. The NDP wants to evenly split that net cost with transit operators, like the city. Using the 2018 City of Ottawa transit budget, it would mean the city would save $142.5 million, money that could be used to lower fares or expand service.

First, city hall would need to know if strings are attached to the funding. The NDP platform doesn’t go deep into detail, but it suggests the money would be somewhat flexible. The funding, the platform says, would allow “transit operators to improve services, provide more equitable and affordable fares, and have the financial stability to experiment and pilot innovative solutions.”

The city would likely be interested in lowering or freezing fares, lowering property taxes or expanding service, and including bus service in areas not getting LRT.

Stephen Blais, chair of Ottawa’s transit commission, said the city would likely want to use the money for all of those things.

“Who knows what kind of conditions (the NDP) would put on the program,” Blais said. “We would need to know what the conditions are.”

The city projects transit fares and transit taxes to increase with transit costs, estimated in a 2017 long-range financial plan at 2.5 per cent annually. An adult monthly pass is currently $116.50 and the per-ride fee is $3.45 using a Presto card or $3.50 using cash. Transpo offers deep discounts to low-income customers.

The NDP says covering part of municipalities’ operating costs would reverse transit cuts under the former provincial PC government, which revealed a forced service trade-off with municipalities in 1997. The NDP accuse the subsequent Liberal government of letting the provincial cuts to transit operations continue.

Over the 20 years since the transit download, the City of Ottawa has started a diesel train service between Bayview and Greenboro stations, opened more park and rides, extended parts of the Transitway and broke ground on the Confederation Line LRT, the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history. Transpo records nearly 100 million passenger trips annually.

The NDP promise wouldn’t be cheap, considering it would also be sending $330 million to Toronto transit operations and millions more to other cities.

Blais noted the NDP’s plan to run multibillion-dollar deficits each year it would be in government if the party wins the June 7 election. Transit isn’t the only area that needs the province’s attention when families also have concerns about the future of education and health care, he said.

”Is going further into deficit an appropriate action for the government to take specifically for that type of program?” Blais said.

Another potential pitfall with this kind of cash infusion is a change in government.

If city hall relies too heavily on provincial funding for operations, “then it always runs the risk as the government changes (at Queen’s Park) in Toronto,” Blais said. “There would be impact on property taxes and user fees in the municipality.”

Blais said changes in upper governments are so common that the city can’t plan for the potential impact to the municipality; it just has to plan for the current financial reality.

Usually, it’s not operating funding that’s the subject of transit promises, especially by the two upper levels of government. Cities hungry for infrastructure money want governments to share the cost of building transit systems, which is how Ottawa came to build the first part of the LRT line scheduled to open in November.

The second phase of the LRT line, plus an extension of the Trillium Line, will cost more than $3 billion. The NDP, Liberals and Progressive Conservatives have voiced support for the city’s second phase, scheduled to begin construction in 2019.

The Liberals’ transit plan is largely rooted in capital projects, and in Ottawa, that means building out the rail lines. Their platform offers fare discounts for transit customers in the Toronto area. It also proposes to give seniors a refundable tax credit for 15 per cent of their public transit costs.

The PCs haven’t included additional province-wide transit measures in its platform, but Leader Doug Ford has promised more subway funding in Toronto. The party says its plan to reduce the provincial gas tax wouldn’t impact municipalities like Ottawa, which relies on a cut of the gas tax revenue to pay for transit projects, like LRT.

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